Compare the institutions CareerSkale works with

Four terms appear across these institutions' websites and are routinely read as meaning more than they do. Getting them straight resolves most of the confusion this table exists to address.

Licence. Permission from a state or national body to operate as an educational institution in that place. It is about legality, not academic standing. Florida's statute puts it beyond argument: "The granting of a license is not an accreditation." Malta's MFHEA licence is a stronger instrument than Florida's because MFHEA is a higher education regulator rather than a general commercial one — but it is still a provider licence, and provider licensing and programme accreditation are separate steps.

Accreditation. An assessment of an institution or a programme against published standards. The word does real work only when you also know who accredited, and whether that accreditor is itself recognised. QAHE accreditation and regional accreditation in the United States are both called accreditation and are not comparable things.

Candidacy. A process that has started and has not finished. Dunster holds ACBSP and AACSB candidacy; EIMT holds ACBSP candidacy and says in its own words that this means "not yet accredited". Candidacy may become accreditation. It may also lapse. It is not a result, and it should never be presented as one.

Membership. Payment of a subscription to an association. IACBE states this itself: educational membership does not imply accreditation. A membership logo in a footer is a fact about a relationship, not a judgment about quality.

A fifth item belongs here too. An exemption — as in American Management University's exemption from California licensing — is a decision that a body does not need a licence. It is the absence of a requirement, not the presence of an approval.

Whether the qualification will be accepted. Recognition and acceptance are different questions. An award can be legitimately issued by a licensed private institution and still be refused by a specific employer, licensing board, university admissions office or immigration authority. Only that body can answer for itself, and you should ask it in writing before you enrol rather than after you graduate.

Whether the teaching is any good. None of these columns measures supervision quality, cohort experience, examiner rigour or how many students finish. We have no auditable data on any of that and will not invent a proxy for it.

Whether the fee is fair. The lowest doctoral fee here is $5,550 and the highest published is roughly £22,500. The cheapest option carries no published legal awarder, no dissertation and no institutional accreditation. Price is not the variable to optimise.

We work with all six of these institutions to support applications, and CareerSkale may receive payment from a partner institution when a student enrols. That arrangement is why a comparison written by us needs to be checkable rather than trusted, and why every row above links to its source.

Only one of the six publishes a listing naming CareerSkale — Dunster Business School, at Bronze, the lowest tier we could confirm. The other five do not, and we say so on each page. See how CareerSkale works with institutions for the detail, and how CareerSkale works and is paid for the commercial arrangements.

We do not publish commission percentages or partner-by-partner terms, and we do not claim our recommendations are unaffected by what we are paid. Weigh this table accordingly, and verify the rows that would change your decision.